5 Things That Still Don’t Make Sense About King Kong

Although King Kong is one of the most well-known movie monsters of all time, not every aspect of his story actually adds up. Since he was first introduced in 1933, he has been featured in numerous movies and TV shows, and has been satirized and spoofed countless times. It’s fair to say that King Kong is a truly iconic movie monster, although many hold that he isn’t a monster at all, but more of a tragic hero. Regardless of how you perceive Kong as a character, the general thrust of his story is simple: an inhabitant of the fictional Skull Island, Kong is typically exploited by inhabitants of the Western world as soon as they discover him.

Although every version of King Kong is a little different from the last, there are many aspects of his story and character that remain consistent. Over the years, some of these popular ideas and tropes have simply become established parts of the mythos surrounding King Kong, but that doesn’t mean they always make sense. In fact, as iconic as the character is, there are many things that make frustratingly little sense about King Kong.

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5) His Size Is Frustratingly Inconsistent

Naturally, one of the most obvious identifying characteristics of King Kong is his size. He’s an impossibly massive primate, towering far above the human inhabitants of Skull Island and any visitors that arrive. However, despite the movies all agreeing that he’s massive, the actual size of Kong is bizarrely inconsistent. He seems to shrink and grow depending on the needs of the situation, with movies repeatedly rewriting and reworking his size in order to best fit their narrative, sacrificing any sense of consistency in the process.

4) How He Was Transported From Skull Island Makes No Sense

One of the few elements that remains consistent across practically every movie following the character is that Kong’s home is Skull Island. He is often taken from the island by human visitors with the intention of exploiting him for financial gain, but the logistics of this rarely make any sense at all. In 2005’s King Kong, for example, he is rendered unconscious with chloroform and taken by boat back to the US. Even putting aside the humans’ convenient possession of such a massive quantity of chloroform, having a being of such size and weight on the ship would have been, at best, a recipe for disaster. Kong would most likely have sunk the ship, either through waking and escaping or by his body weight alone.

3) How He Survives On Skull Island

While Kong’s size is rarely consistent, he is always pretty massive. As one of the strongest movie monsters out there, Kong boasts a pretty staggering amount of muscle mass. Estimates vary wildly as to how much he would need to consume to maintain this size and strength, but even the most conservative speculation makes it clear that he shouldn’t be able to survive on Skull Island. The sheer amount of hunting and gathering that would be required to keep Kong fed is unsustainable, particularly on a relatively small landmass as isolated as Skull Island.

2) A Giant Primate Like King Kong Is A Scientific Impossibility

Although Kong and the other Titans of the Monsterverse are all pretty impossible, the fact that Kong is simply a colossal primate has seen more scientific ideas applied to the character. This includes the speculation that a being of Kong’s size is a physical impossibility, owing to the sheer weight of his muscle mass. The science behind Kong implies that his mass would actually crush his internal organs or break his bones, making his survival all but impossible. While of course his existence is fiction, there is rarely any explanation offered as to just how he’s able to survive under the basic laws of physics.

1) Capturing King Kong Should Have Been Unthinkable

One of the common elements of King Kong’s story across the years is the way that visitors to Skull Island capture him in order to take him back to the Western world in order to exploit him. However, doing so makes no sense whatsoever, as there are several logical issues with that decision. Firstly, the notion of keeping Kong fed should alone be enough of a deterrent, as it would almost certainly cost more to keep him alive than could be made by showing him off to crowds. More importantly, there’s absolutely no way in which capturing a colossal primate and bringing him to one of the most densely populated areas on Earth would ever end well, and while it’s undoubtedly a comment on human greed, it also makes no sense at all.

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